Homeless Cats

Just in time for Trad Gras och Stenar (Trees Grass and Stones) 40-year anniversary the Swedish psychedelic trance-rock pioneers releases a new album - Homeless Cats. The first one in seven years and the seventh since the singing start in 1969. Eleven new boundless tracks with organic music for open minds. A 40-year anniversary is actually rather on the small. Back in 1967 the guitarist BoAnders Persson had already started his Terry Riley-inspired underground band Parson Sound with the bass player Torbjorn Abelli and drummer Thomas Mera Gartz, amongst others. They evolved into International Harvester, then Harvester, and finally striking root as Trad Gras och Stenar in 1969. The following year they arranged, end performed at, the legendary Swedish Gardes-festivals that pioneered the Swedish alternative music movement. Trad Gras och Stenar creates their own contemporary music, even if they have been compared to Krautrockers like Can and Faust internationally. Rhythmic heart pumping and sound streaming, sure ' but at the same time peculiarly Swedish, with their roots in the mould and with branches that reaches high up in to the clear air. The new album, 'Homeless Cats', has also been able to develop in its own tempo. It was recorded by the band themselves during the period 2002-2007, mostly under jam-like forms in the bands rehearsal house and studio in Viksund - Sweden, but also live at gigs. During this period they also toured Europe, USA, Russia and Japan. In the meaty album booklet they give us a couple of personal travelogues. Trad Gras och Stenar have evolved a clear and mature sound with space enough for both suggestive heaviness and mind-expanded searching. The eleven new tracks bubbles and seethe. The band members build soundscapes all together where the music is allowed to grow forth freely in compositions like 'The Railway Engine of the People in Irresistible Motion', 'Don't Fear the Northern Lights' and 'The Unexpected Encounter in the Mushroom Forest'. Sometimes the mostly instrumental tracks are irresistibly captivating, like in the trance dancing 'Summer Disco'. As well as evolving seemingly weightless, like when the loop-like 'The Most Beautiful Moment of the Dream' breathtakingly floats in to 'Thorns of Solitude'. It could be a movie soundtrack. Or earthy space rock. The song 'Wedding Reel' diverges from traditional ways of playing Swedish folk music. The rhythm and melody is racked almost brutally in a hard duel. Like a plow in turbo tractor pace wrenches deep furrows in the stone field. Homeless Cats makes its mark. Heavy, at the same time vertiginous. Timeless.